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From: Gunars Neiders
Date: 05 Oct 2007
Time: 13:43:05 -0500
Remote Name: 67.183.183.115
Veronica,.....I believe that some of us are born with certain amount of disfluency. That part we cannot readily change...... An imperfect but sometimes useful metaphor comes to mind: that some people are born more or less left handed. Some are actually ambidextrous and switching to left hand takes no effort....Others can learn enough "techniques" to use their fork with their non-dominant hand, but would greatly suffer if they had to become a concert violinist using their non-dominant hand....In central Europe the upper class and middle class people eat with for in left-hand....it is not a big deal to learn it as an adult...yet as a child I remember that you were allowed to use fork in your right hand...........Now let us turn to your questions: "1)Do you think we stutterers put too much emphasis on how fluent we perceive ourselves to be?" and "2)is it better to accept being imperfectly fluent or to strive for greater fluency?" Answer to question #1: Everyone needs to do a cost and benefit analysis *after* they learn to unconditionally accept themselves whether they stutter or not. It is important to understand all of us are Forever Fallible Human (in the words of bible, we are Sinners). It is necessary with a help of good psychologist to understand that we are not our mistakes, we are just fallible existential human beings who can love ourselves despite our making mistakes. We are not our mistakes. We should not beat ourselves up about our mistakes. (In terms of bible, "Hate the sin, but not the sinner.") We can accept ourselves, love ourselves whether we stutter or not...............Once we do that we must find a good SLP and see how much effort will it take to minimize our stuttering. If we truly accept ourselves as people who on occasion stutter, we can do regular minimal voluntary-pseudo-stuttering and erase almost all of our shame, guilt, self-deprecation....Now it is only a matter of whether we will eat with our left or right hand and how much we will stumble or drop food...If there is no embarassement involved most people will be able with some effort to switch eating with their non-dominant hand...so why not give a college try as long *as you don't expect perfect performance from your non-dominant hand and learn a couple techniques such as "pullouts" and "easy onsets"...whenever though you get back to where you feel shame, guilt, embarassement it is time to do some hard core Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy or similar psychological theory to accept yourself unconditionally...*There may be some people for whom the effort to change their cognitions, emotions, or behaviors and the sensory perceptions of their behaviors, even imperfectly, is too hard*. Don't blame yourself, accept yourself unconditionally and move on with your life.".........Answer to question #2: My answer is both. As long as I live I will need through occasional voluntary-pseudo-stuttering (even three re-re-repetitions during the whole day) learn to accept myself in-my-gut (viscerally or at my neurological axon connections) that I might stutter and that it would not be "awful", "terrible", "horrible".....I can do my three re-re-repetitions each day, *I can stand to do them*.....*yet at the same time just like doing my calisthentics, my morning exercises I can: a) practice in front of the mirror 3 minutes of pullouts and 3 minutes of easy onsets (or whatever you and your SLP agrees are the best for you to do) and ....b) I would read something new about stuttering therapy, something that could provide you an easier way out of the thicket of habits of: ...a - self-damaging affect of how you feel about yourself; ...b - struggling stuttering;...c - cognnitions that mess with your head (self-talk that it is too hard to work regularly on my speech, that it is awful if I don't speak perfectly, that somehow I am to blame for stuttering or not learning to control or manage it fast enouth, and ...s - senseory perception deficiency in manitoring stresses, self-defeating feelings, and proprioception (the movement and setting of speech producing muscles). ......If you spend 10 minutes on your speech the way you are spending 10 minutes each day on daily exercises you will progress beyond your wildest dreams....Best of luck, Gunars